


take my face and desecrate

by BlackBat09



Series: Sladerobin Weekend 2k19 [3]
Category: Batman (Comics), Deathstroke the Terminator (Comics), Red Hood and the Outlaws (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Canon Temporary Character Death, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Possessive Behavior
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-02
Updated: 2019-05-02
Packaged: 2020-02-16 04:49:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18684487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlackBat09/pseuds/BlackBat09
Summary: Except for the broken eye he was born with, Jason’s scars never stayed.





	take my face and desecrate

**Author's Note:**

> (Late) Day 3 of Sladerobin Weekend 2019- Mer AU | **Forced Bonding** | Stockholm/Lima Syndrome
> 
> title Body by Mother Mother  
> probably not the best application of the prompt but eh! i finished it!

The prince of Gotham is born with a scar.

His left eye is bluer than Gotham’s skies have ever been, but the right is pale and milky, the soft skin around it marred so viciously that the nurses fret over him, but the doctor assures his parents that it’s no fault of theirs, no medical mishap or toxin in Gotham’s water.

“It’s a soulmark,” the man tells them, setting the boy in his mother’s arms. “His mate, whoever it is, has the same one.”

It’s not the only soulmark Jason gets; no, many more scars stripe his skin, his parents flinching at the sight of tiny gunshot wounds; but, as they come to learn, it will be the only one that stays. The rest of Jason’s marks come and fade within days, the condition concerning enough for them to bring him back to the doctor, but there’s nothing they can do. The study of soulmarks is pseudoscience at best, after all.

As Jason grows older, all he can think is that something is wrong with his bond.

* * *

While Jason’s marks never stay, his soulmate’s never fade.

Slade knew Adeline wasn’t his soulmate; honestly, it’d been a bit of a blessing, once things went bad, no one expecting the strength of some mystical connection to keep them together when they were unhappy. Besides, he doubts Addie would have left him with scars if she also had to endure them as proof of the things she’d done; she prefers to play the angel to his demon.

The first scar is rather innocuous, so much so that Slade nearly misses it, but some lucky (dead) bastard slices through his Achilles’ tendon and forces Slade to take a good look at his left leg, where he finds the scarred divot in his shin. He blinks at it, like it’s a trick of the light, but it stays, and he passes his fingers over it almost reverently. It’s probably from a fall, his mind supplies, scarred over due to an inability to let the scab alone while it healed; Grant had always been particularly, obnoxiously persistent in picking open scabs again, no matter how many times both Slade and Addie told him it’d heal slower when he did.

His soulmate, and oh, how sweet the words are, is probably young, then: it explains why this is the first, why it’s taken so long, when Slade had almost thought he didn’t have one. He wonders how long they’ve been seeing the scars of Slade’s work come and go, or if they even go, if this soulmate’s skin is a map of Slade’s life that he himself doesn’t even have. The thought is... unpleasant.

The scars that join that first scrape over the next few years, cigarette burns and jagged lines of torn skin, are more unpleasant, and Slade hates that all he can do is sit, with evidence of their pain on his body, and wish death on whoever hurts them. They’re _his_ , and he has no way of knowing who or even where they are.

Frustrated, Slade often finds himself tracing the scar on the joint of his right thumb, one of theirs, and willing them to be strong. They’re a survivor; he wouldn’t settle for anything less; and they’ll be that much better for everything they endure.

* * *

Whether his soulmate is “better” is debatable, but they do learn to adapt.

Jason is blind in his right eye, his field of vision from his remaining left interrupted by the bridge of his nose, and to say it makes things hard is an understatement. There’s no warning when someone comes up on his right, no movement in his peripherals to alert him to where he should look. There’s no peripheral vision at all on his right, obviously, and it’s that fact that he blames for the scars on his right hand from someone’s dog: if his right eye _worked_ , he could have moved his hand earlier to avoid the teeth that took a piece of flesh from the inside of his middle finger and dragged across the outside of his thumb.

He stops trying to ask for a puppy after that.

What he lacks in vision, he does his best to make up for in hearing, learning to listen for things on his right, estimate how far away and how fast they are, their direction and what they are. It works, to a degree; sometimes his focus on other things is too intense for him to notice sounds, and he gets startled by someone touching his right shoulder, but that happens to people who aren’t half-blind, too, so Jason’s not too worried about it. Mostly, he keeps an ear out when he’s working, to make sure he doesn’t get caught or have some other kid try to move in on his take, but he doesn’t know anyone else stupid enough to try and jack the Batmobile’s tires, so he’s not too surprised that it’s _the_ Batman who walks up behind him in the middle of it.

 _The_  Batman seems a little surprised when Jason turns and brandishes the tire iron at him while he’s still ten feet away, or at least as surprised as you can look in a big dumb leather mask, but that information comes second to smacking him in the gut and making a break for it as fast as Jason’s legs can carry him.

Batman catches him anyway, the old bastard, and he stands in Jason and his mother’s tiny apartment and makes it seem even tinier with his imposing presence, asking the usual questions adults ask that make him sound like a pig, just one with a fancy costume.

Then he asks unusual ones.

“How did you hurt your eye, Jason?”

Jason freezes, longer than he intends to, almost half his cigarette burning to useless ash that he flicks away with bared teeth. “I ain’t hurt it,” he snaps, more defensive of it than he’s been of years, than he was answering questions about his mother. There’s just something about the way Batman asks, overly gentle, like he’s not the shadow of Gotham, the demon that stalks Crime Alley, making men and women disappear- “It’s my soulmark.”

He doesn’t seem to know how to answer that, lets Jason take a few more drags before he finally does speak up. “You say that like it’s the only one.”

 _Shut up_ , he thinks viciously: at who, he doesn’t know. “It is. The other ones fade cuz my bond’s messed up.” Jason stubs out his cigarette again the window ledge like it offended him, jaw clenched so tight his skull aches. “We done here?”

“Yes, Jason. We’re done here. Thank you.”

Jason finds out what a lie that is when the pigs pick him up the next day and drop him off at Ma Gunn’s. He has some _words_  for Batman the next time they meet.

He also has some new scars that his soulmate will never see.

* * *

Slade does notice the change in the pattern of scarring, though. The buildup of rough tissue on his his knuckles, for a start, and how the scars elsewhere get both worse and better: the obviously malicious burns stop, sure, but Slade crushes a glass in his hand the first time he realizes there’s a bullet graze on his fucking forearm that _he_  didn’t get. Someone shot at them.

The bullet _hit them_.

It takes an hour to calm down, Slade’s sluggishly bleeding hand fisted in his hair, and the red dries rusty against the silver as Slade digs glass shards out of his palm, breathing deeply every time he reopens one that’s already healed.

He has to reason with himself with every new mark, just to avoid putting his fist through a wall like some sort of petulant teen: that the faint scarring of stitches is better than the mottled, ugly scars of an infected wound, that at least the scarred knuckles mean they’re learning to fight back, that they’re not a victim, but he knows he’s more forceful when he works now, more willing to pick a fight with anyone he knows will go up against him. Like Batman and his new little bird, who he’d usually avoid; Nightwing is more fun to fight than the Bat, and the new kid doesn’t have Grayson’s skill or charms; but Slade’s dying to hit something that’ll hit back and be worth his time, drawing his sword as the Bat approaches.

“Robin. Go home.” It’s quiet, but Slade picks it up over the wind and the sounds of Gotham nightlife, just like he sees the way Robin’s face contorts and his fist clenches.

“ _Why_? ‘Wing deals with this chump all the time-”

 _You aren’t him, brat_ , Slade thinks cruelly, but blinks in shock when the Batman echoes him.

“You aren’t Nightwing. Head in.” The kid stares silently, shoulders trembling. “ _Now_ , Robin.”

A softly snarled curse and a flash of yellow satin and he’s gone, leaving Batman staring after him, his attention only snapping to Slade when he laughs. “Careful, Bats. You don’t want to push another little bird out of the nest, now do you?”

If looks could kill, Batman would’ve broken more than just Slade’s wrist in that fight.

He comes to regret the line when the little Robin dies. An anonymous arrangement of lilies expresses his condolences, one father of a dead son to another, but the sentiment isn’t meaningful for long.

* * *

After six months, Jason rises from the grave.

The hospital that he shambles into while looking like an extra in a Romero film is appalled by the state he’s in, wiping away the funeral home’s makeup and staring in horror at the flash burns on his arms and legs, the deep divots in his back, the autopsy scar that bisects his chest; it’s silent for a long moment before they start rushing to keep him from dying.

Again.

Jason’s not even aware enough to examine the scars they leave him with; reinflating his lung, opening up his chest again to fix his sternum, patching up his _skull_ ; before the Lazarus Pit takes all of them away, wiping away _all_  of his scars.

All of them except his soulmark.

* * *

After years of Slade’s marks never fading, they vanish.

He’d thought the marks of a beating on his back were bad enough, the long splits of skin and the sharp two-pronged divots made by a weapon Slade couldn’t even begin to guess, and then was immediately proven wrong by the bubble and twist of burn scars on his arms and legs. Even still, he was determined, maybe in denial, that they’d be fine. They were a fighter, after all, his, and strong, and obviously someone had been looking after them over the past few years, there was no way they were _gone_. Someone had to have gotten to them. Someone helped them. They’d live.

The night the Y-incision carved itself into his chest, Slade had vomited until his stomach acid burned his throat, mourning the soulmate he’d never met, the one who, by his estimation, couldn’t have been more than twenty.

Somehow, the day the marks vanish is so much worse.

He’d felt hope again, after half a year without scarring, when new marks had emerged, on his ribs and his chest and his scalp, new scars that had to prove they were alive. Maybe they’d been comatose for a time, or simply recovering, healing enough that more surgery could be performed. Whatever the reason for the long wait, they were _alive_ -

And then, after two more years with only the slightest change in scars, every last one of them is gone.

Wintergreen finds him three days later on the floor of his safehouse, hands buried in his hair, and sighs heavily before dragging him off to shower.

But for all the alarm he feels when the marks vanish, it’s short-lived; in fact, Slade gets new marks within a month of the originals vanishing, and he swears they accumulate the same volume of scar tissue as the past decade or so in just a few more months. Nothing is quite as bad as the flash burns, thank fuck, but it’s still alarming to see how fucked up they manage to get in such a short time, cuts and gunshot wounds and less severe burns littering whatever skin is available. Slade is annoyed, of course, because they’re apparently a self-destructive dumbass, but the familiar buildup of scar tissue on his knuckles is a welcome sight, even if the rest is stressful as hell.

What the scars mean, according to William, is that Slade can finally stop moping and do something with himself, a statement he doesn’t appreciate but takes to heart anyways. Society jobs aren’t too interesting when he’s just playing recruiter instead of really working, but it pays, and, besides, the new player that he’s giving Mask people to fight more than makes up for the boredom, in his opinion. Red Hood is a strategist, a lethal force, the sort of man that could do a lot and _is_  doing a lot, even if it’s on a small scale. There’s a reason they dispatch a man meant to fight Captain Marvel to take him down, besides the fact that Slade knows Hood is a killer and he wants that Nazi fuck dead, of course. He’s brutal but skilled, seemingly prepared for any eventuality, and the people they throw at him are ones that, if used right, if Mask has his shit together, can overwhelm him.

Mask does not have his shit together. If he did, Batman wouldn’t have shown up to assist Hood, would’ve been across town handling some mundane shit that Mask’s remaining underlings stirred up, but no, he’s there to fight at Hood’s side as Slade watches. They fight well together, he notes, not a hint of hesitation between them, neither taking the many openings they have to attack one another; they’re seamless, in how Batman tosses Hood, throwing stars breaking on Captain Nazi’s upraised arm, leaving his chest open for Batman’s explosives in a move that’s... oddly familiar.

They don’t fight like Batman and some drug lord, he realizes, watching them both go down, watching Hood respond to an order from Batman without hesitation or protest: no, there’s trust there, experience, partnership.

They fight like Batman and Robin.

Slade lets out a soft sound of consideration, shifting his rifle and adjusting the scope to watch Hood more closely: he is the party of interest here, after all. If Hood is a Robin, it’s a matter of figuring out _which_. The blonde is the first one Slade can eliminate, even if Hood’s vendetta against Mask would make plenty of sense, but she’d fallen to Mask because she was more spunk than skill, something not at all present in Hood; he’s obviously had extensive training, from the Bat and likely others.

The fact that the current little bird is off playing Titan on the weekends takes him out of the running; Slade doubts the others would take kindly to him planning a war in Gotham in the Tower, and there’s overlaps in time that just wouldn’t work.

And Grayson, well, that just doesn’t make _sense_ , not with how he had to chase the boy away from his daughter for trying to turn her against Slade; for Dick to go from showing Rose the light to burning the Bat’s city down doesn’t add up. Besides, Slade had ensured himself that Grayson would be walking with a limp for a while, and Hood isn’t favoring a leg.

The only Robin that would leave, though, is dead, and has been for more than three years.

To be honest, Slade can’t make the call on whether it _is_  him, not knowing exactly how he moves and fights: Bats had sheltered that bird from him with a fury Slade never quite understood, even with how he treated Grayson. The current one doesn’t get the same level of mother henning with regards to Slade as the fallen one did, either, and something itches at the back of Slade’s mind as Hood ends the fight and leaves, as Batman himself vanishes from the scene.

His mind continues to race as he disassembles and packs away his rifle, slinging the case over his back just in time for Batman to land near him, that silent stare of his filled with a menace Slade rarely feels from him, the same sort he’d felt when the second bird was flying. Slade’s right, then: Hood is the fallen Robin, but it doesn’t explain this, not completely.

A piece is missing.

“Evening.”

“Get out of Gotham.” No please, no thank you, not even asking _why_ , just an order to leave the city. Slade shifts, looking the Bat up and down.

“I’ve got business.”

“No, you don’t. Count Vertigo and Hyena will be entering GCPD custody, and Captain Nazi is,” he hesitates.

 _Pussy_. “Dead,” Slade finishes. “Thankfully. Hood handled it well. You teach him that one?”

The temperature of the conversation drops a good ten degrees. “The Red Hood is not your business. The Society’s work here is finished. Leave Gotham, Deathstroke.”

“I’ve never understood why you were so goddamn protective of that kid. I thought I got it, father to father, but then he died. And then the new one, you don’t care what he does. It was just that one, and just me,” he emphasizes, stepping closer, looking down with the few inches he has on the Bat. “So why?”

“Would you really understand a parent’s instinct to protect their child?” Slade could kill him, he really could, but that won’t give him answers.

“Low blow, but not enough to change the topic. Why him? Why me, Batman?” He gets the distinct feeling he’s been judged for the questions.

“He was volatile, even as Robin. He didn’t need your influence.”

“ _My_ influence? Look around you, look what he’s become. Even if he breaks your rules, he’s playing your game. Are you really self-absorbed enough to think this is a better outcome than what he’d do with my influence?” Silence. Slade knows his own failings, as a man and a father, but he has to wonder sometimes if the only thing that separates him from the Bat is their willingness to kill. “What made you even think I could influence him?”

Finally, he gets a reaction: the Bat’s already-tense spine goes ramrod-straight, the creak of leather as his fist curls. But why? What leverage does Slade have for him to worry about? What could he have possibly done to Jason that was worse than him dying?

Slowly, something clicks into place.

Roughly three years ago, Jason had died, killed at the hands of the Joker. Three years ago, the bird had been beaten, blown up, and buried.

Roughly three years ago, Slade had watched a beating write itself across his skin. Three years ago, he’d been struck speechless by flash burns, and felt how the autopsy scar opened a hole in his own chest, leaving him gaping and shaken.

The motion is unconscious, Slade’s hand slowly rising to his chest, fingers pressed against his sternum where the Y-incision used to lie. He thought his soulmate had died, once.

He was right.

“You knew,” Slade accuses lowly, still trying to come to terms with it, how he could have been so stupid, even as his blood thrums with want. His soulmate is in Gotham. He knows who it is. He can have him- “You knew, and you kept him away.”

More silence. Slade clears his racing mind with a shake of his head, leveling Batman with a cold stare. “You must have known from the moment you brought him on, since you never once let him near me.”

“I had my suspicions,” Batman allows. “The scar he does have is distinctive. The fact that all the others healed rapidly confirmed it.” Slade might be shaking, with rage or adrenaline, he doesn’t know. Doesn’t much care.

“You can’t keep him from me anymore.”

The fist in Slade’s face says he’ll damn well try.

* * *

Jason feels the scars that night.

He’s grown more attuned to the feeling of them emerging and fading on his skin over the years, the tightness of skin puckering before it smooths out again, bond still as broken as it’s always been. All Jason can think is that his soulmate’s got shitty timing tonight, when Jason’s got his own damn things to deal with, like the fact that he thinks the Nazi fuck might’ve cracked a rib.

“Ah, fuck,” he hisses softly, pulling his fingers away from his slowly-purpling side. Yeah, definitely cracked a rib. Jackass Nazi bastard. Good fucking riddance.

Jason simply sighs at the prickle and tug of scars forming, ignoring them in favor of tending to the wounds that matter. The marks will be gone in the morning.

His injuries will not.

* * *

The wounds Batman inflicts, fighting like a madman to protect a boy he’d long since failed to keep safe, are off Slade’s skin by the time the morning rolls around, but the beating can’t take away the precious knowledge he’d been given: that the Red Hood, the second Robin, Jason Todd, is Slade’s soulmate.

He tells the Society to shove it and Wintergreen to let the job offers sit in his email for a while, setting up in his Gotham safehouse to keep an eye on the chaos Jason creates, and there’s an odd sense of pride in seeing him play Mask and the Bat, glimpsing the calculation behind it all. Every hit on Mask’s ventures, every time he circumvents Batman’s efforts to stop him: even if Slade still hates every new scar Jason gets, someone touching what’s _his_ , he understands how and why the kid gets them now, and he’s not about to get in the way of vengeance like that.

That’s what he tells himself, that he’s an observer, until the damn fool kid’s final showdown with daddy dearest ends with a thick swath of scar tissue on Slade’s neck and a whole building coming down. That’s when he’s within his right as Jason’s soulmate, the man he belongs to, to get involved, jaw clenched so tight it aches as he watches the kid shove himself out from under rubble, adding his own effort to the mix to drag Jason out before the Bat rouses. Jason recoils when he realizes who has his hand, teeth bared in a snarl, but Slade ignores it, pulling Jason into his arms with a snarl of his own at the bloody gash in his neck, guiding Jason’s own hand to press against it firmly before throwing the slightly charred remains of the kid’s leather jacket over him, hustling away from the scene and bringing him to his safehouse.

The boy dozes in and out in Slade’s grip, never fully falling asleep, mostly because Slade won’t let him, not until they can stop the bleeding from the ugly wound on his throat, earning another weak grumble every time he jostles him, getting him through the door and laid out on Slade’s bed. He’ll have to thank Wintergreen for insisting on first aid kits, even when Slade doesn’t usually need them, cleaning away the blood and dust and stitching Jason up with a steady hand before he finally lets him sleep.

* * *

Jason wakes in an unfamiliar room.

He’s in unfamiliar clothes, too, that smell of someone else, and he hits the floor with a painful thump in his haste to scramble towards the pile of his gear that sits, dusty and torn, on a chair in the corner of the room. The sound summons whoever brought him, footsteps in the hall coming closer, and Jason grits his teeth through the ache of standing to sprint across the room, pulling a knife from his jacket and turning to brandish it as the door opens.

Deathstroke seems unfazed. “You’re up.”

Jason snarls at him, stepping back, body low, but Slade doesn’t move an inch, just watches him with that one pale blue eye. “Thought you were helpin’ kill me,” he challenges.

“I was.”

“So why ain’t I dead?”

“You’re a smart man, Jason. You tell me.” The use of his name throws him for a second, but he still sees the way Slade tilts his head, the scar on the left side of his neck that makes his brain stumble, again, raising his right arm to touch the bandages on his own throat, not flinching as he presses down where the batarang had dug into his flesh. Slade finally moves a hand, holding it out to show it’s empty when Jason tenses, before slowly reaching behind his head, tugging at the string of his patch until he can remove it.

The empty socket may be a shock, but it’s not what draws Jason’s eye, no; it’s the familiar scarring around said socket that Jason can’t look away from, lungs frozen in his chest as his mind whirls. Slade is- _Deathstroke_ is-

“Bruce knew,” he says quietly, and Slade nods, but Jason is driving on ahead. “Bruce _knew_ , all along- it was never about me, it was about you. That’s why he put me in- that’s-”

“Jason-”

“Shut up.” His grip tightens on the knife again, trying to regain his footing. This doesn’t matter. It doesn’t mean anything. “I don’t know what you’re trying to get out of this, Wilson, leverage over the Bat or compliance or a cut of my work, but I’ll kill you before I let you use me.”

Slade’s face twists. “The only thing I’m trying to _get_  is what’s mine, kid. My soul-”

“I’m not your fucking soulmate.”Jason doesn’t know where the words came from, but the silence that follows is deadly, anger flickering across Slade’s face that he obviously tries to quell before he answers Jason.

“Mind explaining the mental gymnastics behind that conclusion?”

“My bond’s broken. Has been since the day I was born. I don’t keep marks. And, even if it weren’t fucked before, I died. It’s gone. Cut. I don’t _belong_  to you,” Jason spits, standing his ground despite the tension in the room, the way Slade watches him, gaze growing cold as he sets his patch back in place, the moves as slow and non-threatening as the removal that Jason doesn’t take the opportunity they present.

It’s a mistake.

Slade is on him in a second, knife pulled from his grip and thrown, lodging with a dull thunk in the wall as one broad hand wraps around Jason’s throat, the other finding one of his wrists and holding him fast as Slade drives him back into another wall, heedless of the injuries Jason’s sustained. His free hand claws at Slade, teeth bared, but the mercenary doesn’t flinch, doesn’t loosen his grip, instead pressing his thumb against the gash in Jason’s throat until he cries out, going from fighting to tugging desperately at Slade’s grip.

“We’ll see about that, little bird.”

**Author's Note:**

> hit me up at blackbat16 on tumblr, comments are love!


End file.
